Thursday, April 5th, 2018
Stephan: I can't tell you how many friends and family from other countries have told me they won't be coming to the U.S. for the foreseeable future. My own sister has told me that she will not return to the U.S. as long as Trump is President and the Republicans control the government. And she is an American citizen living abroad. My niece who works for the U.N. running a program that helps women and children feels the same. And they are by no means unique. Foreign visitors generally are way down and their numbers are dropping rapidly, as this report spells out.
This is not a trivial issue. Cities and states that are usually tourist destinations will be significantly impacted. Hotels, museums, national parks, restaurants, all with hourly workers will suffer. Immigrant doctors and nurses who constitute a critical part of what passes for healthcare in the U.S. aren't coming, which means that rural hospitals and clinics which disproportionately depend on immigrant professionals are already suffering staff shortages or closing.
All of this is being done by Trump and the Republicans to cater to their christofascist White supremacist base.
To the rest of America: It's time to stand up and be counted
The United States is granting fewer visitor visas to people from around the world — not just Muslims — as President Donald Trump ratchets up his anti-immigration rhetoric.
By one measure, the U.S. granted 13 percent fewer visitor visas over the past 12 months when compared with fiscal year 2016, according to State Department data analyzed by POLITICO — a downward trend that appears to have accelerated in the past six months.
It’s unclear whether the drop is due to fewer people applying or more rejections of applications. The cause is likely some combination of both. The State Department furnishes data on how many visitor visas are granted per country, but releases only limited information on how many applications are received or refused.
But the decline comes as Trump is once again underscoring his hard-line views on immigration. Over the weekend, the president used Twitter to blame Democrats and the Mexican government for a “dangerous” flow of migrants over the border. The Republican president blasted America’s “dumb immigration laws” and threatened to abandon legislative talks on how to deal with undocumented […]
We cannot live alone, as a separated nation without the immigrants which we direly need for our country to survive. We cannot allow Trump to stop the immigrants from coming into our country because it will cause great suffering here. We need to raise up our voices and demand that the congress stop Trump and his supporters from what they are trying to do, even if it means dethroning our president by mass gatherings of people standing up for what is right, as well as voting out of office anyone who supports Trump because he is too dumb to run our country right into the ground, as are his appointees.